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Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Death, Tantra, animals, LOVE

One week ago right now, we were racing to UC Davis, desperate to see our Jasper, hoping against hope that we'd be able to cure him, take him home with us, have more time. It was not to be. Now a week later, I am still periodically feeling utterly nauseous with misery and missing him. I managed to get out of bed this morning without crying, but still have moments all day when I am overcome by the loss of him and my eyes leak.

It's so amazing to love someone -- yes, someone, even though he was a canine someone -- just so much.

I resisted going to Herpetology last night. In fact I spent all afternoon scheming a way to withdraw from the class. I lost my Sweet Pony, I said to myself -- what do I care about a bunch of snakes, anyway? All I wanted, I thought, was to go home, sit on the couch, stare out the window, think about Jassie, be sad if I felt sad.

But I went anyway. And that was so the right thing.

All week, glimmering just beyond my grief, has been this tantalizing thought that our lovely gorgeous Jasper was a temporary aggregation of molecules, of Shakti as we'd say in yoga, just as we all are. How lucky we were to share in that particular form that he took, so beautiful and brindle, so full of a boundless love.

I can see it more clearly now, with each passing day, though I am still aching from his absence and probably always will.

So yoga's been giving me that particular Tantric gift, of thinking that Shiva (goodness, consciousness) chose to take shape as Jasper, that the Shakti (energy) that animated him, is not gone. It's just transformed, returned to come again another way. And next year's peaches will be all the sweeter from his transformation, the roses that much more lovely.

Last night, sitting in a lecture I almost didn't attend, a lecture about crocodiles and alligators, oh I was so filled up again with the happiness of animals -- the sheer delight of looking at how they're constructed, what makes them what they are. It did so much to restore me, to draw my head back up, chin back, drink it in.

I will miss him ferociously forever. I would still trade just about anything under the sun to have Jasper back with me, but I see all the more clearly now what a tremendous gift his huge love was and that that big fat love persists, all around.